The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain SpiritualityIn the tradition of Kathleen Norris, Terry Tempest Williams, and Thomas Merton, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes explores the impulse that has drawn seekers into the wilderness for centuries and offers eloquent testimony to the healing power of mountain silence and desert indifference. Interweaving a memoir of his mother's long struggle with Alzheimer's and cancer, meditations on his own wilderness experience, and illuminating commentary on the Christian via negativa--a mystical tradition that seeks God in the silence beyond language--Lane rejects the easy affirmations of pop spirituality for the harsher but more profound truths that wilderness can teach us. "There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokeness we find within." It is this apparent paradox that lies at the heart of this remarkable book: that inhuman landscapes should be the source of spiritual comfort. Lane shows that the very indifference of the wilderness can release us from the demands of the endlessly anxious ego, teach us to ignore the inessential in our own lives, and enable us to transcend the "false self" that is ever-obsessed with managing impressions. Drawing upon the wisdom of St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhardt, Simone Weil, Edward Abbey, and many other Christian and non-Christian writers, Lane also demonstrates how those of us cut off from the wilderness might "make some desert" in our lives. Written with vivid intelligence, narrative ease, and a gracefulness that is itself a comfort, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes gives us not only a description but a "performance" of an ancient and increasingly relevant spiritual tradition. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 9 | |
Purgation Emptiness in a Geography of Abandonment | 23 |
Illumination Waiting in a Silence Beyond Language | 87 |
Union Love as the Fruit of Indifference | 149 |
Other editions - View all
The Solace of Fierce Landscapes:Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality ... Belden C. Lane No preview available - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
abandonment Abba Abbey AP-alph apophatic prayer apophatic tradition ascent attention beauty biblical canyon cell century Christ contemplation Cross dark death deep desert and mountain desert Christians desert experience desert fathers desert monks discipline divine dragons dying edge Edward Abbey emptiness Evagrius everything fear fierce landscapes Georgia O'Keeffe Ghost Ranch glory God's grace Gregory of Nyssa grotesque healing holy human icons imagination indifference insisted Israel Jesus John Cassian John Climacus Julian of Norwich kataphatic knew land language learned light live Meister Eckhart metaphor mind monastery monasticism Moses mother Mount Sinai mystery Mystical never night nursing home one's ordinary Paulist Press playfulness rock sacred Saint Saint Catherine's Monastery says sense sert silence snow leopard soul speak spiritual story symbol Tabor terrain terror theology things Thomas Merton thought trans transfiguration trees truth University Press wild wilderness wind words Yahweh York